Taibbi's use of facts leaves much to be desired. In writing a book, he has the luxury to weave together strands from different sources, leaving it to the reader to make all sorts of inferences. A prosecutor, however, is restricted by an evidentiary framework that allows certain facts to only be proved by certain sources, and allows juries to make only certain inferences.
Here's a pretty neutral take on the facts: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/11/us-hsbc-probe-idUS....
This stuff makes for good reading, but let's break it down through a legal lens. There is nothing illegal about your banking services being used to deposit the proceeds of illegal activity. It almost certainly happens all the time to every bank. In fact, no bank executive could say with a straight face that they don't have a generalized knowledge that their services are used for money laundering. What differentiates legal from illegal conduct, on the part of the bank, is nothing more than what the bank knew about the nature of the money deposited in specific transactions: http://www.swlaw.com/assets/pdf/news/2011/09/26/MoneyLaunder.... The crime requires the government to prove that the defendant had knowledge that the deposits were proceeds of illegal activity.
Viewed through this lens, the facts are much less compelling:
> Despite the known risks of doing business in Mexico, the bank put the country in its lowest risk category
The mens rea is knowledge, not negligence. To be relevant here, the "known risks" would have to be so blatant that ignoring them would amount to willful ignorance of specific illegal deposits.
> which excluded $670 billion in transactions from the monitoring systems, according to the documents.
This might provide a motive for the alleged crime, but it's much stronger in a case for negligence than in a case for money laundering. Moreover, HSBC's selection of controls probably excludes trillions of dollars of transactions in places like the U.S. or Canada. This fact by itself doesn't tell you anything other than that the bank has an incentive to implement as few expensive controls as it can get away with.
> Bank officials repeatedly ignored internal warnings that HSBC's monitoring systems were inadequate, the Justice Department said.
First, "repeatedly ignored" is a characterization, not a fact. Second, HSBC was not legally required to implement this particular controls. Third, for this fact to be relevant, the warnings would have to make the problem so apparent that ignoring them amounted to willful blindness to specific illegal activity.
> In 2008, for example, the CEO of HSBC Mexico was told that Mexican law enforcement had a recording of a Mexican drug lord saying that HSBC Mexico was the place to launder money.
This sounds really compelling, but it's really not very strong legally. First, you have evidentiary issues. An anecdote about a recording of a comment by a Mexican drug lord isn't going to get admitted as evidence that drug traffickers actually used HSBC to launder money. It's hearsay. Second, it doesn't refer to specific deposits of illegal proceeds, nor is it so compelling as to prove that failure to act on this knowledge amounts to willful ignorance as to specific illegal deposits. Third, you have to prove that the parent company knew anything about all of this.
> Mexican traffickers used boxes specifically designed to the dimensions of an HSBC Mexico teller's window to deposit cash on a daily basis.
This is legally irrelevant unless you can prove that: 1) anyone who mattered at HSBC actually knew what shape these boxes were and why; 2) that failure to act in light of this knowledge amounted to willful blindness as to specific illegal deposits.
> At times, only one to four employees were responsible for reviewing alerts identifying suspicious wire transactions. When HSBC processed bulk cash, a business it calls Banknotes, only one or two compliance officials oversaw transactions for 500 to 600 customers, the Justice Department said.
This is again more relevant to a negligence claim than a money laundering charge. Does this evidence go to prove that HSBC had knowledge of specific illegal transactions?
The "drug trafficker's boxes" fact is a great example of the difference between a narrative in a book and an actual prosecution. Taibbi can state it as a fact and let the reader draw all sorts of conclusions. But as a prosecutor, you must:
1) Find someone with personal knowledge of the shape of the boxes; this guy is likely a drug trafficker and thus not a very sympathetic witness;
2) Find someone with personal knowledge who can testify that HSBC had actual knowledge of the boxes and appreciated the significance of the shape;
3) Justify taking HSBC's knowledge of the shape of the boxes + HSBC's knowledge of the widespread nature of their use, and from that inferring that HSBC knew specific deposits were the proceeds of illegal activity.